


In the ground and sea

by Katarik



Category: Three Sisters Island Trilogy - Nora Roberts
Genre: F/F, Femslash, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Internalized Homophobia, Misses Clause Challenge, POV Female Character, POV Third Person Limited, Past Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 16:21:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8899114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katarik/pseuds/Katarik
Summary: Nell started it. Ripley and Mia talk.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meretricula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meretricula/gifts).



> Friend, I ALSO love me some Nora Roberts, and I have been mad FOR YEARS that nobody not nohow is queer over here. Don’t spend three books with these ladies all up in here talking about how gorgeous each other are and then no-homo me, La Nora.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this story of ladies kissing.

Ripley felt totally comfortable blaming the entire day on Nell. She was happily settled with Ash, so of course everybody else had to be happily something, friends for everybody. Bleh. Ripley liked her life how she had it, her nine square miles of land and the lives on it that she and Ashley protected together, even just from their own dogs. Or from something worse, like assholes who thought money and power meant they could own someone.

(Money, and power, and something that had ripped through wards like paper.)

Oh, yeah, that too. Ripley had had to admit the magic thing hadn’t been just Mia. Still pissed her off, that, and pissed her off worse that a piece of her had been almost relieved, ached with a pleasure nearly sexual to open herself up to power again, Mia’s eyes blazing challenge at her.

She rewound that thought as she strode back up the steps, morning run over, and scrubbed it out. Just because helping out her sister’s lover-for-life or whatever had meant reaching back down deep for that, it didn’t… she’d outgrown that. They’d never even done anything, anyway, Mia back then had been all about fire and water, and Ripley didn’t have that flare. That rippling, lovely, shimmering seduction Mia had always been so good at, and wanted in other people.

Fuck it. She wasn’t a teenager anymore, and she’d outgrown the insecurities of being Mia Devlin’s totally unglamorous best friend. Even if that had taken longer than anything else.

So Ripley had started the day in a lousy mood, and even Nell’s excellent breakfast didn’t fix it. Hot cinnamon rolls and roasted oranges had done a lot to help, but even with Nell setting aside an extra for her for later, she was still scowling.

“Ripley,” Nell ventured, while she was putting away the dishes Ripley had helped wash. There were still bruises on her. Ripley ached to put them on her ex-husband. Bastard. Who could look at Nell, all sunshine curls and flower-petal eyes, and think about hurting her? “I… there’s something I’d… would you mind… no, never mind.”

“Sure,” Ripley said, and Nell glanced over and smiled, and suddenly Ripley was suspicious. “Wait, what something?”

“I’d just like to spend the day with Mia,” she said as as she turned around. “And you,” as Ripley groaned. “I’ll make lunch, we can all go over and spend the day at her place. She’s already said yes.”

“Did she say yes before you decided to make it for three?”

Nell’s dimples winked as she bit back a smile. “Mia didn’t ask,” prim.

She’d already said yes. And there were dimples. Ripley groaned louder and resigned herself to a day off being spent at Mia’s castle of Spookville.

***

She’d escaped Nell and Mia and meditation the second she’d had a chance. Nell had driven them both up, and Ripley could just walk back from here, but… Mia had given her that *look*. Ripley refused to give her the satisfaction, or the chance to say she’d backed down. So she just wandered instead.

Mia had put her own stamp on the place. It was still the Devlin place, Mia’s castle on the cliff, but it was Mia Devlin’s now, not her parents’. Little whimsical goblins and faeries peeked out from fern beds that had been paved stone before; what had been flat lawn was a terraced wonderland of flowers in all shades of blue. There was so much green now, more tones of green than Ripley had known existed, and every light scatter of pink or blue or yellow made the green seem more beautiful. The white flowers gleamed like stars, made the brown dirt and green leaves under them look like a sacred foundation. Ripley, exploring, found her mouth curving into a smile. The bones of it were still the same, one of the places she and Mia had run wild under Lu’s watchful eye. Ripley hadn’t been scared often on Three Sisters. She’d never been scared, or even so much as unhappy, here, and a piece of an old hurt eased as she wandered through Mia’s well-tended patch of earth, the world she’d turned a kinda boring garden and a lawn into.

Seeing all the changes, she hadn’t been braced at all to turn a familiar path and see one place that hadn’t changed. Ripley stopped dead, the shock of it like a punch.

Mia hadn’t designed this place, and it showed, the lines of it starker, the colors less variegated. She had. The little tree she’d picked out, the shelled walls, the flowers… well, okay, the tree had changed, the tree had grown and spread and sheltered the pair of chairs the way she’d planned it to. The chairs had changed, no longer plastic lawn chairs for little kids or girls about to grow into teenagers. They were wood now, with soft-looking cushions worked in green. Ripley stared at the place she’d put her stamp on, her breathing ragged.

“It does suit you,” from behind her, soft.

She turned, not knowing when Mia had left Nell, when Mia had followed her, how Mia had even known where she was. No, Ripley knew -- once, she could have pointed right to her from anywhere on the island, had breathed Mia’s breath and felt her joys and her hurts. She couldn’t now. Mia, apparently, still could.

Her eyes were an open wound, the smoke-grey of them bleak the way Ripley hadn’t seen her look in years. Sarcasm, mockery, dried up on her tongue. “I… I sort of figured you’d… Mia,” helpless, gesturing at the garden a ten-year-old had designed. When had she even started caring about earth?

“It suits you,” Mia said again, not moving except for her eyes, her gaze drifting from the hedges that tucked this chunk away, to the tree, to Ripley. “Seeing you here. I knew this section was missing something.”

If Ripley had ever thought about her garden, she’d have figured Mia would have bulldozed it a long time ago. Not out of spite, maybe, but just because, well, Mia was classy. Ripley was… solid. Yeah. Solid and steady, but she hadn’t really fit here when they were kids, and the place was even more upscale now, under Mia’s impeccable, snotty tastes.

But the chairs she’d picked out looked perfect with the tree Ripley had.

“God damn it,” Ripley growled, helpless again, Mia’s perfect face lost and vulnerable the way Ripley hadn’t known she could even cause, and closed the distance between them, her hand wrapping around Mia’s, startled the way she always was at the calluses on that elegant skin.

Power popped between them, a sudden shocking warmth as their hands closed around each other. Mia’s breath came in on a gasp, color flooding her face, and Ripley had walked away from this for so many reasons, but if she’d ever known *she* could bring that look to Mia Devlin’s face… “Mia,” strangled, feeling suddenly clumsy, eleven and waking up from dreams of the Sisters that had turned into dreams about her best friend. She’d felt sick, monstrous, and had shoved it all away and focused on the crushes that didn’t make the power sing inside her, and then she’d wrecked Ash’s boat and known she was a monster, had to get away from Mia’s pain choking her and making her worse, but Mia’s grey eyes were so bright now, and her hand was strong and sure on Ripley’s.

She wasn’t sure who moved first. Mia’s mouth was slick with lipstick, and the kiss burned, scorched out years of bitter dislike. Burned her right down to the core, where how much she’d always loved Mia still waited, and woke up everything else she’d buried so deeply she’d forgotten was there. Ripley moaned in the back of her throat, and Mia made a noise Ripley hadn’t had a clue elegant, contained Mia Devlin could make, raw and hungry.

For the second time that day, Ripley stopped tracking. There wasn’t anything but Mia, Mia’s hands in hers and her mouth; eventually, Mia’s hands were in her hair, Mia’s wand-supple body against hers, and her hands were under Mia’s silk shirt, sliding up her silken back, feeling the muscle of her.

The clasp of her bra under Ripley’s fingers, already half-undone, snapped her out of it. Ripley drew back, panting, and shuddered at the brush of Mia’s nails down her jaw, fought down a bolt of lust when she realized Mia’s hands were shaking.

“We’re not done,” Mia said, after a long, humming moment. “You and I, Ripley. We’re not done with this.”

She had to swallow twice before she could manage to talk. “You’re not my boss, Mia. … We’re not done,” came up from her gut, and almost forgot it was broad daylight and they were outside when Mia shut her eyes and took a slow breath like she had to calm herself, like Ripley was getting to her that much.

She had to drag her hands out from under Mia’s shirt, and stuck them in her pockets to keep them from going back under. “I’m pretty sure this isn’t my color,” Ripley joked, trying to breathe, trying to pretend she couldn’t see the outline of everything in her garden glowing with the force of whatever she’d turned away from for ten years.

Mia’s eyes went hot, their smoky depth hiding fire, and she smiled the kind of slow smile Ripley had only ever seen her turn on someone she wanted to take to bed. It sort of made her chest hurt, that smile turned on her. “Oh, I don’t know, Ripley… I like it on you. We’ll have to apply more later, and see.”

“Mia,” Ripley blurted out, as she stepped back and turned away. “Why’d you keep this place?”

“Because you always belonged here. Even if I couldn’t stand to come.”

Staring at her back, Ripley whooshed out a breath. She was pretty sure this pair of panties was already ruined, and her jeans were either too tight or the seam wasn’t nearly tight enough.

She was gonna have to scrub her face off, and Nell was probably gonna know anyway. “God damn it,” Ripley said again, redid her ponytail, and followed Mia back out.


End file.
